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Resources and Crafting
Em-8ER has a simple yet powerful crafting system that drives player and world goals. Everything in the game is crafted by players, even bases and base fortifications such as automated weapon systems, defenses and buildings, are improved through the gathering and use of resources. Crafting requires the gathering and mining of resources. Gathering resources is core to the war effort and is itself an action packed mini-game of risk vs reward. You mine with your THMPR MEK and defend it against increasing waves of enemies with the player deciding how far to push things. Gathering resources is also a core activity that fuels the war effort and helps transform the world by powering terraformers. Each terraforming transition requires a large amount of resources which are contributed by players. Resource Types “Resource” is a general term for several classes of valuable materials gathered by mining. These include: Common Ore Common ores are plentiful elements used in the construction of structures, simple electronics, and as a common ingredient in most crafting templates. Examples include elements such as titanium, beryllium, scandium and others. Common elements are plentiful during THMPR extraction, and appear early in the drilling process. Isotopes Isotopes are rare forms of elements that can enhance crafting templates to produce superior or exceptional properties in crafted items. They appear towards the latter stages of THMPR drilling, where enemies are more plentiful and powerful. Players have to push further and endure more attacks to reach the stage where Isotope can be extracted by the THMPR. Phased Ore Phased ore is unique to Em-8ER. Phased ore is ore that is extracted from the time-loop from where the Tsi-Hu attack from their time prison of the distant past. Phased Ore appears when Tsi-Hu attack THMPR mining operations as a natural side-effect of their phasing into the current time stream. Phased ore is extremely rare and can imbue crafted equipment and weapons with unique properties. It is only extracted at the latest stages of THMPR mining, where the time breach is large enough to encompass part of the terrain being mined. It is therefore the riskiest to extract. Artifacts EM-8ER was once a thriving world inhabited by the Tsi-Hu prior to their civil war and imprisonment in time. Ruins of ancient Tsi-Hu cities and constructs are buried under eons of planetary change. When mining, it is not unusual to encounter several of these ancient technological artifacts. Artifacts can be deposited at bases for research. As players deposit resources to fund research, new crafting templates are discovered and made available. Common Exchange All resources can be converted to “common exchange units,” simply abbreviated as “CE.” CE is a form of currently in the game, most often used when players contribute resources to common efforts such as base building or terraforming. Each resource type has a fixed exchange rate that can be converted to CE. Goals for terraforming zones and improving or building bases. CE can also be used as a medium of exchange between players in a future trading house update. Tiers & Templates Crafting templates are blueprints. They allow players, with the requisite resources, to craft new weapons, ability modules, omniframes and more. Crafting templates are unlocked through research conducted at bases. Research is funded by resources that players gather and deposit at research facilities. Research itself is split along a general tech tree. Players choose which technologies they wish to research, and this in turn unlocks specific blueprints for use in crafting. Tech trees have prerequisites and branches for specialization. Research and discovery take time. The more resources a player spends on research, the faster the tech tree is unlocked. Blueprints themselves are arranged in tiers. Tiers represent the current overall state of the art of technology available in the game. Lower tiers are less powerful than higher tiers, although the power curve is shallow and higher tiers tend to provide more options rather than absolute increases in damage, for example. Each branch of research will keep expanding in available blueprints as more and more tiers are unlocked. Tiers are unlocked by experience points that players acquire by battling Tsi-Hu, defending bases and contributing to group efforts such as base building and terraforming. World Tier The world tier is the current maximum tier of technology unlocked in the game overall. Em-8ER will be regularly updated with new tiers and new blueprints that will increase the maximum world tier. World tiers must be achieved and maintained by players combining their efforts to achieve world goals. World goals are achievement states for the overall world and may include number of zones under player control, terraforming state of those zones, bases founded, and other common objectives. World tier is not static, but can rise and fall as Tsi-Hu and their Kaiju fight to destroy bases and take back zones from players. If a world tier drops to a lower tier, players will not be able to craft or repair new gear or equipment above that tier. Players can increase the world tier up to the current maximum, by taking back territory invaded by the Tsi-Hu or rebuilding bases which had been destroyed by Kaiju. Basic Crafting The basic crafting process is simple. Each blueprint has a list of resources needed to create the item. If you have the blueprint and the resources, you can create the item. Crafting times are instant for equipment. Base building and improvements are different, and use CE (common exchange) instead of raw resources, and can take days. Advanced Crafting Players can improve their items and tune them after their basic creation. There are two main aspects that can be tuned. The first is raw stats, called traits: things such as defense ratings, damage ratings, and other item specific aspects such as power consumption, cooldown rates, etc. The second is adding secondary characteristics, called effects, to items such as procs or secondary effects. Standard traits are modified directly. Each item will have a number of traits such as damage and rate of fire or others. Each of these traits can be increased up to 50% of their original value. Each trait is tied to a specific isotope. The overall percentage of improvement of all traits (combined) is capped at 50%. If you improve an item’s damage by 50%, you cannot improve its other traits such as power savings or reload rates, for example, but if you were to improve it by 25%, you would have 25% left to improve among other stats. The more you wish to improve a stat, the more of that isotope is required. Effects can be added to many crafted items. Effects can range from additional effects that fire on critical hits, such as immobilization or targeted damage, to knock-back effects, or bonuses against creature types. These effects come in the form of upgrade modules. Each item has a certain number of upgrade slots available to them. Modules are created from phased ore and have their own set of recipes. Players who do not wish to engage in advanced crafting can have other players modify their equipment for them, or purchase modules off of the future player marketplace. There will also crafting NPCs in the world that can improve items randomly for a price, sometimes even beyond what players can accomplish. Finding Resources Players usually have something specific in mind when they are hunting for resources. Usually its materials needed for something they wish to craft. Using the resource trackers, players can add the items they want to craft to a user interface that automatically tracks how many and what type of resources players need. The UI does several things: Notifies players when they have enough to craft items they are tracking. Influences the random nature of resources when players are searching for them. There are two ways of searching for resources. The first is by going to a nearby base and getting a resource mission. Any base can help scan and locate resources for players. If a resource of the type is nearby, the base will identify it, put it on the player’s map and generate a mission for it. There is a cooldown on how often players can get resource missions, and not all resources are in every zone or near every base. This is a guaranteed method for players to find the resource and minimum quality ratings of isotopes or phased ore they are seeking. The second way is always available and can be repeated as often as desired. Players can consult their world map to see the likelihood of resources being located in certain zones and get more detailed information near where bases are constructed. By traveling to the likely areas, players can then hunt and scan for resources by exploring the nearby area. Omniframes are equipped with sensors that let player “ping” their location seismically by extending a locater spike from the frame’s fist and slamming it into the ground. The spike sends out different wavelengths of energy that are then registered by the omniframe’s sensors. The information received indicates the direction and closeness of nearby resource pockets as well as their type. Any tagged resources in the player’s resource trackers will subtly influence the results of the scan, but not guarantee results. Item Repair Crafted items that are damaged during combat begin to wear down. When an item is worn down, it will eventually degrade in performance and stop working. Items can be repaired at any base for a certain EC cost equivalent to 50% of their total EC equivalent cost in resources. Note that you can use any resource to effect the repair by converting it to EC first. source: https://forums.em8er.com/threads/new-section-resources-crafting.852/